


Higher than the Stars

by clearbluewater



Series: Gigolas Week 2014 [3]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Cultural Differences, Love Confessions, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:19:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1207477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clearbluewater/pseuds/clearbluewater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Legolas confessed his love to Gimli in the Glittering Caves. Or at least, he thought he did. Aragorn cheats on his strict diet of elvish nonsense to set Legolas straight. Legolas tries again in Fangorn Forest, with much better results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Higher than the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day Three of Gigolas Week for the prompt "Glittering Caves/Fangorn Forest". I always wondered why Legolas was so quiet when they returned from the Glittering Caves.

            “I’m going to tell him,” Legolas said to Aragorn, almost vibrating with excitement and fear. Aragorn smiled at him. It was a rare, wide smile that Legolas had seen too little since his friend had become king.

            Aragorn took his pipe out of his mouth and raised it as if to toast Legolas. “Go then. Visit the Glittering Caves with him and tell him of your love.”

            “I shall. Oh, but I am so nervous!” Legolas said. His elation had taken an abrupt swing to terror. His emotions had vacillated between those two poles ever since Legolas had resolved to tell Gimli that he loved him. But the time when they would be sundered was swiftly approaching. Legolas vowed that he would tell Gimli, whether the consequences be rapture or heartbreak. Gimli was mortal, and Legolas could not wait. Gimli needed to know now; the time together they would have if they became lovers right now was already too short.       

            Legolas paced. “How did you do it?” he asked Aragorn. “How did you manage to ask Arwen?”

            “Being stupid helps. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”

            “Do you think he loves me?” Legolas asked, swinging suddenly close to Aragorn’s face in his fitful wanderings, making Aragorn recoil.

            “Peace, Legolas! I am quite sure that he is just as stupidly enamored of you as you are of him.”

            “I hope so,” Legolas said, wringing his hands.

            “Legolas!” Gimli called. Legolas jumped slightly and turned towards the sound of Gimli’s voice, running a hand through his hair. “Are you ready to go?” Gimli asked. Legolas nodded.

            “Have fun,” Aragorn said, putting a strange emphasis on the word _fun_. Legolas sent him a quelling glance. Gimli seemed oblivious.

            The two of them set off into Helm’s Deep, Gimli chattering all the way with animation Legolas rarely saw from him. Would Gimli ever speak of Legolas as lovingly as he spoke of this unfeeling cave, this heap of stone?

            “You’re awfully quiet,” Gimli said.

            “I enjoy hearing you talk,” Legolas replied, and it was the truth.

            “Well, that’s good. I find I cannot make my mouth stop when I speak of these caves.”

            Legolas had stopped walking, but Gimli had been in front of him and hadn’t noticed. Now was a good time! Say it!

            “Gimli—”

            “Welcome to the Glittering Caves!” Gimli interrupted with a flourish, striking a match. Legolas gasped. At first his eyes believed that he was outside, looking up at the stars, but he was underground and it was daytime. Everywhere the gems embedded in the rock twinkled in rainbow colors, and the shine from each bounced off and reflected on the others in an endless display of blinding brilliance.

            “ _Melui_ ,” Legolas breathed.

            “Isn’t it?” Gimli said, his voice equally soft and reverent. He slipped his hand in Legolas’s, and Legolas was abruptly catapulted from wonder back to anxiety. Did Gimli mean anything when he took Legolas’s hand? Perhaps he meant merely to lead Legolas around, nothing more. The sights were all quite wondrous, but Legolas became inured to it quickly. He found more to wonder at in Gimli’s face, and perhaps some jealousy. Had Gimli ever looked upon Legolas like he was this precious thing, the most brilliant thing in the world?

            Legolas felt very foolish. He was being jealous of a _cave_. It was just his nerves. He needed to say it, soon. Now. Just say it. Just open his mouth and say it.

            “Gimli?” Legolas asked, and he hardly recognized the sound of his own voice.

            “Aye, laddie?” Gimli asked. He was bent over and was inspecting some stone.

            “I want to talk to you.”

            “Mmm,” Gimli said.

            “I want you to talk to _me_ , not grunt at a rock.”

            Gimli made a show of straightening and turning around to look at Legolas. “Well?” he said. Unfortunately, Legolas’s nerves chose that moment to desert him, leaving Legolas gaping like a fish in Gimli’s gaze. “Were you going to say something?”

            “You look very beautiful,” came out of Legolas’s mouth. While not necessarily what he had intended, it was true. Gimli, in his happiness and his surroundings, sparkled outside and inside. He gave Legolas his “daft elf” smile, and somehow Legolas found the courage to proceed.

            Legolas sank to his knees to be level with the dwarf. “Gimli, _mellon nîn_ , I…I hold you higher than the stars. Do you…do you hold me the same?”

            Gimli chuckled, as if Legolas had made a joke instead of declared his undying love. “Daft elf. You’re heavier than you look. I would not like to hold you over my head for very long, much less hold you up to the stars.” With that he turned away back to inspect the stone Legolas had drawn his attention away from earlier. Legolas wondered if he could hear the _crack_ in his chest.

            “Oh. Oh. Well then,” Legolas managed to get out from his constricted throat. He…he hadn’t even let him down gently. He might not love Legolas, but Legolas thought that he at least valued their friendship enough to not dismiss Legolas’s confession so offhandedly.

            Legolas followed Gimli through the Glittering Caves in a daze. Gimli continued to discourse at great length, but Legolas had stopped listening to the words. The winking of the gems mocked him, and he shut his eyes to them.

            At last they stepped back out into the sunlight and back to the others. Aragorn looked up at their approach, a smile on his face that quickly fled when Legolas met his gaze.

            “How was it?” Aragorn asked. Gimli immediately started waxing loquacious, but Aragorn’s eyes were intent on Legolas. “Legolas? What say you?” he asked.

            Legolas gave Aragorn a smile. Or at least, he tried. “Gimli alone can find words to speak of the Glittering Caves.”

            “And never before has a dwarf claimed a victory over an elf in a contest of words!” Gimli crowed. “Now therefore let us go to Fangorn and set the score right!”

            “You would still go to Fangorn with me?” Legolas asked in surprise.

            “Of course. I did give my word.”

            “That is…reassuring,” Legolas said. He excused himself from the company and walked blindly into the Deeping-coomb. Legolas was hardly sensible of Aragorn joining him until he spoke.

            “Did he give you any reason for denying you?”

            Legolas made a sound. He wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a snort or a whimper. “Only a flippant one.”

            The continued walking for some time in silence. “He still values your friendship,” Aragorn said.

            “Not as much as I thought he did. He didn’t even…he didn’t even try to soften the blow! It was just…” Legolas flailed his arms in a manner Aragorn seemed to understand.

            “What did he say?”

            “He said that I was heavier than I look and that he should not like to hold me up for any length of time.” Legolas looked into Aragorn’s eyes for sympathy, but instead he found confusion.

            “What did _you_ say?” he asked.

            “I told him that I held him higher than the stars, and asked if he felt the same.”

            Aragorn stopped walking. “Oh for the love of…give me strength,” he said, looking up at the sky. He sighed. “Legolas, that’s not a real love confession. I don’t know what that was, but I would be just as confused as Gimli if you gave me that elvish nonsense. And I was raised on a strict diet of elvish nonsense. Tell him, in plain Westron, that you love him. ‘I love you.’ Say those words _exactly_.”

            “You mean…”

            “He was flippant because he thought you were making a _joke_ , saying more of your strange elf things. I am still quite sure that he is enamored of you and would respond well if you _actually told him_.”

            “Truly?” Legolas asked. Did he dare to let himself hope?

            “Yes, truly. Now, off with you to Fangorn to try again.”

            An insane lightness seized Legolas’s heart. He flopped to the ground in hysterical laughter. “I was wrong! I was wrong!” he gasped. When he could, he jumped up and squeezed Aragorn and ran back to the company, his feet barely skimming across the grass in the way that only a lighthearted elf could.

            They could not travel to Fangorn fast enough. The rest of the party simply thought that his haste was due to his wood elf strangeness, but only Aragorn knew that it for love of something other than trees.

            Legolas could not speak fast enough when Treebeard offered passage through Fangorn. “Come, Gimli!” he said. “Now by Fangorn’s leave I will visit the deep places of Entwood and see such trees as are nowhere else to be found in Middle-earth. You shall come with me and keep your word; and this we will journey on together to our own lands in Mirkwood and beyond.” Hopefully as lovers, Legolas mentally added. Gimli agreed to go, but without much enthusiasm. Well, that was too bad. Legolas had not been particularly excited at the prospect of the Glittering Caves, but that was nothing compared to the torture that Gimli had put him through before Legolas had realized that Gimli had not understood him. If Legolas could suffer through that, then Gimli could take a walk in the woods with him.

            And so the Fellowship was sundered, and Legolas knew in his heart that they would never be all together again. But he could bear it if only Gimli stayed with him.

            Legolas felt none of that paralyzing doubt that he had felt in the Glittering Caves. In fact, he strolled about as casually as if he was viewing flowers in his own Mirkwood. The worst had already happened. Legolas no longer had anything to fear. He waxed lyrical about the beauty of the trees, often directing his compliments to the trees themselves. He whispered to them in Elvish of his intent to declare his love, and they listened politely, but they were trees and did not care overmuch for mortals or love.

            Gimli was adorably jumpy. Every sound of the forest made him twitch and itch for his axe, but he could not draw it if he did not wish to risk Treebeard’s wrath. Legolas took pity on him and took both of Gimli’s hands into his own. Gimli looked up at Legolas, which reminded Legolas to kneel.

            “I have something very important to ask you,” Legolas said.

            “Ask, then.”

            “I love you, Gimli, son of Glóin. Do you love me?”

            Gimli’s face went through several emotions at once. Legolas could hardly believe that he had once thought dwarves an inexpressive as the stone they were supposed to be carved of.

            “Aye,” he said, finally. Legolas threw his arms around Gimli and embraced him.

            “I am glad. So glad,” Legolas whispered in Gimli’s ear, running a hand through Gimli’s hair. They pulled away only to gain distance to kiss. Gimli’s hand wound itself in Legolas’s hair, combing through the fine strands with his fingers. When they broke away, Legolas stifled a chuckled into Gimli’s shoulder.

            “What’s so funny?”

            “I laugh at my own foolishness, not you, my love. Do you know that I tried to confess my love for you before?”

            “Really? When?”

            “In the Glittering Caves.”

            Gimli made a face like he was sifting through all his memories of that incident and was coming up blank.

            “The part with the stars,” Legolas prompted.

            “That wasn’t a confession!”

            “So I have been informed! You broke my heart then, you know.”

            “I am sorry to have caused you pain, unintentional though it was,” Gimli said, cupping Legolas’s face.

            “You should make it up to me,” Legolas suggested, running his hands up and down Gimli’s back.

            “I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you,” Gimli vowed, and he kissed Legolas again. 


End file.
